The Holy Thief (23 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The landscape was flat in every direction right up to the dark blue line of the horizon; one enormous field that flowed and ebbed in the wind, the wheat stroking his elbows as he walked slowly forward. It was like a sea, tossed and flattened by the strong breeze, golden and dark as the clouds moved over it, gusts marking their progress in long, rolling indentations. The only noises were the rasping caw of a circling crow and the swish of the swaying wheat.

The rifle was heavy, and he let it hang there at waist height, his thumb rubbing the safety catch and his finger light against the trigger. The Pole was here, somewhere ahead of him, crawling on his elbows and knees, no doubt, trying not to disturb the surface above him. Korolev searched for an anomaly that would signal the scout’s progress. He’d be heading west—that was where he’d come from and that was where the rest of them would be. He wondered whether he was wounded. The Pole’s horse was a hundred meters back, panting its life out, its eyes looking for the last time on the sky above, thick blood already drying on its chest where the machine gun had caught it. He stopped and listened, but all he could hear was the crow still circling the horse, calling its fellows to the feast.

Each step he took was careful, feeling for a quiet place to rest his weight before he swung the other leg forward. He could hear each stalk pop underfoot, but he couldn’t hear the man ahead. The Pole’s rifle still hung from the saddle on the dying horse, but he could be sure the man had a pistol. Didn’t officers always have pistols? How else could you shoot your own men?

He stopped and slowly turned his body to the left, shifting his weight as he did so. He’d heard something; very close. The bayonet rippled silver as it led the rifle’s arc. Another noise and now he stood still, his thumb checking the safety catch was off. He thought about firing a bullet to smash a hole through the wheat just in case he might see a scrap of khaki cloth, but then up the Pole came, the sword first, then the arm, the cap, the eyes, the twisted gray teeth and the snarling mouth, the epaulettes, the dark polish of the Sam Browne belt, each gleaming button on the uniform coat, up they all came and straight onto the bayonet he’d pushed forward in a lunge. The point went in just above the buckle on the cross belt and slid through fabric and skin as if they were paper. The rifle twisted in his hands as the blade hit a rib and then another and then it was through, into the lungs, and then another rib as it searched for the daylight on the other side. The sword was still coming toward him though and instinctively he pulled the trigger, once, twice. The bullets flung the man off the end of the rifle, a look of surprise in his already dead eyes.

Korolev stood there, shaking, blood slick along the length of the bayonet, listening to the screaming and knowing it was his own voice.

“There, there. Quiet now. You’re frightening the child.” The voice was deep and calm. He tried to open his eyes, but the lids seemed to be stuck together, and came apart only with difficulty. The resulting light was intense enough to hurt and he shut his eyes against it, as tightly as he could, feeling a familiar stab of pain in his forehead, and then opened them wide all at once. A pair of spectacles stared down at him.

“Concussion,” the spectacles said. “That’s what it is. Concussion.”

“Will he be all right?” a girl’s voice asked. She sounded very young, interested rather than concerned. He felt relief there was no fear in her voice.

“Of course he will. Look at him. He’s strong as a horse. He’ll be fine.” The spectacles gleamed approvingly, “He needs a good night’s sleep and a little bit of care. But yes, he’ll be all right. Don’t worry yourself, young lady.”

Korolev blinked. He was in Moscow, in the new flat. The Polish officer remained in the past, just a memory indistinguishable from all the other bad memories from that time. He swallowed, his mouth dry, and someone put a glass to his lips. He swilled the water round his tongue before drinking it, feeling it work its way down his throat.

“There. You see, he’s not so bad. Just a bang on the head. How many fingers, Comrade?” The man in the spectacles held up three fingers.

“Three,” Korolev said, his voice sounding broken and old. No energy for cleverness this time.

“Good. But, you need a day on your back all the same.”

“Can’t,” Korolev heard himself say.

“Of course you can. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. Semion Semionovich?”

“At least a day. We have to preserve our best workers. That comes from the Central Committee directly.” He recognized Popov’s voice but couldn’t see him—the man with the spectacles was so close that he blocked out the rest of the room.

“There, what do you say to that?”

Korolev realized he was frowning. As far as he could work out, he was lying on the chesterfield in the shared kitchen. He managed to push himself up onto his elbow and then, with Spectacles’s assistance, into a sitting position. He let his head hang and focused on the shifting floorboards at his feet until they steadied, and the urge to empty what little must be left in his stomach passed. Then he looked up at the people in the room. Shura was standing by the kitchen entrance, her face grave. To her side, Valentina Nikolaevna stood, her blue eyes searching his for something, her mouth a straight line. Her hand rested on a pretty young girl’s shoulder. He presumed this must be Natasha, Valentina’s daughter; about eight, dark blonde hair, her mother’s eyes and a Pioneer’s red scarf tied round her neck. She smiled at him shyly. Popov was standing by the window, rubbing his nose with his unlit pipe.

“What happened?” Korolev asked, still confused as to how he’d ended up back in the apartment surrounded by people—when the last certain memory he had was of being bent over double, spilling his guts onto a rain-drenched street with an assassin’s footsteps fast approaching. But perhaps even that memory was uncertain.

“General Popov brought you,” Natasha said, her eyes on his, her wide face open and frank. “He knocked hard on the door until I opened it. You were asleep on the floor. He told me you were ill and needed a doctor and then he brought you in here.”

“She came upstairs and I called up to Professor Goldfarb,” Shura said. “He lives on the fifth floor. He came away from his supper and we carried you in here.”

“It will keep,” the professor said, taking off his spectacles to polish them.

“And the Comrade Investigator,” Shura asked, “will he be all right? A nasty cut on his head he has, hasn’t he?”

“As I said, he should be fine.”

“Your face was as white as a sheet of fancy paper, like a ghost’s,” Natasha said with relish.

“What happened?” Valentina Nikolaevna took a step forward and reached out her hand as if to touch the stitching. “It looks bad.”

“An accident.” Korolev said, waving away everyone’s concern, although his voice sounded weak, even to him. “Concussion is it?” he asked the professor, trying to adopt a man-to-man professional brusqueness.

Valentina Nikolaevna shook her head in bemusement. “You should have seen the place when I came home, full of people and you in the middle looking like a corpse—it was like a scene from a play. Could you manage some food?”

Shura’s head popped up like a gundog’s and he hadn’t the heart to refuse. “Maybe a little soup,” he said and soon Valentina Nikolaevna and Shura were arguing quietly in the kitchen over its preparation. Natasha gave him a small smile as she placed a cushion on a wooden chair. Then she sat up to the table and opened an exercise book. Homework, Korolev thought to himself, and something about the child studying and the sound of the women in the kitchen filled him with a feeling of warmth and security. He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again to find Popov gazing down at him. He looked smaller than usual.

“How do you feel, Alexei Dmitriyevich?” Popov asked, his voice barely audible.

“I feel like someone filled my head with concrete, but not too bad, I think. Lucky for me you picked me up off the pavement.”

“Your notebook fell out of your pocket in the car. I came back to give it to you.”

“Thank you, Comrade General.”

The general waved his thanks away. “The professor says you need a minimum of twenty-four hours rest. I’ll talk to Semionov and Gregorin tomorrow and we’ll work out how to deal with the investigation. Whatever else, you’re going to take it easy for a day or two.” Korolev opened his mouth to object, but the general raised a weary hand.

“An order, Alexei Dmitriyevich. Comrade Professor, please confirm your diagnosis.”

“Indeed. Concussion requires at least twenty-four hours bed rest. Well, you don’t actually have to lie on the bed, but certainly no going to work. You need a bit of quiet and a lot of sleep. Oh, and no vodka. Not even beer. Sleep is what you really need. Ideally there should be someone here with you the whole time. A precaution purely, but important. Valentina Nikolaevna?”

Valentina nodded without smiling. “Of course, Comrade Professor. If it’s necessary, I can rearrange my shift.”

Perhaps if the general hadn’t looked so utterly worn, Korolev might have objected, but instead he allowed himself a grimace of annoyance for form’s sake and nodded his agreement.

“Good,” the general said, rising to his feet. “Well, we shall say our farewells, I think, Professor.”

“Yes. Goodnight. Valentina Nikolaevna, here’s my number at the university tomorrow if you need to call me.”

The professor scribbled on a page from a small notebook, then tore it out and handed it to Valentina.

Korolev would have stood, but the moment he tried to shift his weight to do so he realized it was impossible. He made do with a nod of his head as they left and then slumped back.

“Here you are, Comrade Investigator,” Shura said, as she brought some soup to the table and placed it beside Natasha. “Can I help you up?”

He nodded and Shura and Valentina Nikolaevna each took an arm and maneuvered him to the table. The smell of the soup, cabbage with some scraps of chicken in it, brought saliva to his parched mouth and he picked up a spoon, blowing on the soup before sampling it.

“Is it too hot, Comrade Investigator?” Shura asked.

“I told you so,” Valentina Nikolaevna said. “Here, let’s give him some bread. He can dunk it till it cools.”

“It’s fine. Please. Thank you both. It’s very good.”

“I’m not allowed to dunk my bread,” Natasha said, turning indignant eyes from her copy book. “How come he is?”

“Because he’s an investigator, Natasha, and he needs to feed himself up to catch murderers and the like,” Shura said, with a mixture of conviction and reproof that seemed to satisfy the little girl. Natasha returned to her homework and the two women watched him finish the soup with satisfaction.

“A strong appetite, hasn’t he, Valentina Nikolaevna—the Comrade Investigator?” Shura said when he tilted the bowl toward himself to scoop up the last of the liquid.

“What happened to my clothes?” Korolev asked, aware that he was wearing an old sweater and his uniform trousers.

“You were soaked to the skin. Don’t worry, we didn’t look,” Valentina Nikolaevna said, causing a burst of laughter from Shura and Natasha, which they hid behind their hands.

“No wonder he has such an appetite,” Shura said in a low tone, and Korolev felt his cheeks becoming warm. He wasn’t used to having so many women around him—they weren’t as cultured as people thought they were.

“What? There’s no other entertainment in Moscow?” he said. “Must all three of you stare at me like I’m a giraffe at the zoo?”

His anger wasn’t false, but it seemed ridiculous in the context, both to the women and to himself, and they didn’t bother to hide their laughter this time. He found a smile tugging at his own lips, which delighted them even more.

“I should go back upstairs,” Shura said, when they’d finished. “Isaac Emmanuilovich will be home soon. But I’ll come down later, Valentina Nikolaevna, in case you need me.”

They said their farewells to Shura and then sat looking at each other: Korolev, Valentina and the small girl. Natasha was the first to break the silence.

“I’ve finished my homework,” she said.

“Good,” Valentina said. “Go and get ready for bed, Natasha. I’ll be through in a moment.”

Natasha picked up her exercise books and her pen and, with a shy glance at Korolev, left the two adults alone. Korolev tried to look elsewhere but his eyes kept wandering back to Valentina’s.

“Natasha did well,” he finally managed to say, after rejecting several alternative ways of breaking a silence that had become too intimate to bear. Valentina seemed to consider the question, clenching her hands together, the knuckles white.

“She’s old for her years. They all are these days. We demand it of them. You saw her Pioneer scarf? Even primary schoolchildren are being prepared for war.” She put a hand to her forehead and tapped a finger gently between her eyebrows. “You mustn’t misunderstand me, of course.”

“I don’t, believe me. I know you to be a loyal citizen.” Which didn’t come out quite how he meant it to, but perhaps all she wanted was reassurance.

She looked up at him and shook her head, as though at her own foolishness.